James H. Brookes

James H. Brookes, D. D. (27 February 1830 – 18 April 1897), American religious writer, was pastor of Walnut Street Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Brookes Bible Institute of St. Louis was named in his honor (www.brookesbible.com). Dr. Brookes was a prolific writer, having authored more than 200 booklets and tracts. He was a well-known Bible teacher and the editor of The Truth, a periodical which served, along with the journal Watchword, as the official organ of the premillennial movement until his death in 1897.

Brookes was the most prominent dispensationalist of his generation and was the central figure of the dispensationalist movement during a period of growth. He was a key leader in the famous Niagara Bible Conference and largely responsible for the authorship of the Niagara Creed. Beginning in 1875, he was the keynote speaker of the conference and for many years served as its president. He befriended Dwight L. Moody during a revival in St. Louis in 1880 and mentored C. I. Scofield, editor of the Scofield Reference Bible (1909).

R. A. Torrey said of him "Doctor James Hall Brooks, the author of “How I Became a Premillennarian,” was the son of Rev. James Hall Brooks, who was the son of Rev. James Hall Brooks, of Revolutionary fame. The grandson of an eminent Presbyterian minister on the paternal side, Doctor Brooks was, also, on his mother’s side, one of forty or more ministers of the Gospel. His uncompromising devotion to what he saw to be right and true was inherited through a grandfather who threw “life, fortune and sacred honor” into the scale of civil liberty, and a father who freed his slaves in the interest of individual liberty, though it left himself and family in poverty. Our Doctor Brooks had his first training under the care of his widowed mother, at fourteen he began earning his own living, and with the aid of his savings won that intellectual culture which sanctified by the grace of God made him the man “mighty in the Scriptures” that he became. A graduate of College, of Miami University, and of Princeton Theological Seminary, his first pastorate was the First Presbyterian church of Dayton, Ohio. In 1858 he took charge of Compton Avenue Church, St. Louis, Mo., where he served for more than 25 years, making its pulpit internationally famous for its unflinching loyalty to “the faith once delivered to the Saints.” As editor of “The Truth” for twenty years; as a leader in sound and biblical exposition, at conferences for Bible study; as author of evangelical tracts and books; few men have contributed more, and more powerfully, to the confirmation of the Word; the promotion of Bible study and evangelism; and, especially, to the spread of “that blessed hope,” his testimony to which is emphasized as a personal experience and conviction, in the tract above."^[1]

References

"James H. Brookes," Truth, volume 25.